Unexpected table creation results

[Rick Turner]

All:

I have come across an unexpected MySQL behaviour that is causing me a bit of grief. It's to do with something common - creating a table - so I doubt it's a bug but I dont understand the behaviour, nor can I find docs that tell me what is going on. So to explain:

I first create a table in the usual way:

CREATE TABLE REGISTER (UID BIGINT, TYPEID BIGINT, ......, PRIMARY KEY (UID));

where "...." represents a bunch of other fields. No problem with the creation and I get a table. However, if I now say 'DESCRIBE REGISTER', I get a really unexpected result:

Field Type ..... (other cols omitted)
-------------------------------------------------------
UID BIGINT(20) ....
TYPEID BIGINT(20) ....

I dont understand why a field specified in the create statement as a 'bigint' is instantiated as a 20 element array of bigints in the database. Can anybody explain??

I have a similar thing with BOOL columns too - I have three of these. Two get instantiated as tinyint(1) - fair enough - but the third becomes an int(11) for no apparent reason.

Whilst this seems to have no effect on operation (I can still successfully do a 'select uid from register where uid> some_number') it is going to be a huge space waster, as this table will literally have millions of rows in it.

Any suggestions or thoughts, anybody ???

Regards

Rick